One would be forgiven for assuming this sentence was written in 2018 rather than in 1968, as part of what is generally known as the Kerner report.

Following the so-called 1967 “race riots” that began in Newark and Detroit and spread throughout the country, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the commission to understand the racial tensions that unfolded during that long, hot summer, as well as how those tensions might be resolved to prevent future unrest. This month marks the 50th anniversary of the report’s release.

Chaired by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, the commission compiled and analyzed volumes of information on cities across the U.S. It found that race colored virtually every socioeconomic and quality of life measure available. Perhaps most importantly, however, the commission placed the responsibility for racial inequality squarely on “white society,” telling white Americans what black Americans already knew: “White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

Fifty years later, the findings from the Kerner report remain all too familiar. Compiling data on housing, employment, education, criminal justice, and health, the Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago issued a report recently that mapped out the conditions of the three largest racial and ethnic groups in Chicago today. A Tale of Three Cities: State of Racial Justice in Chicago Report found persistent, pervasive and consequential inequity on almost all key indicators. Many of the racial dynamics in Chicago in 2018 are all too similar to those of 1968.

What has changed over the past half-century? As captured in the title, one major change is that there are now three Chicago’s, not just two. On average, white, African American and Latino Chicagoans live in different neighborhoods, attend different schools, and have vastly different life experiences.

Looking at black-white inequity, segregation levels remain extremely high, and even affluent black households are as likely as poor ones to be segregated from white households. Black workers continue to be paid less than equally qualified whites, with the typical white family earning $81,702 per year compared to only $36,720 for the typical black family. And blacks experience qualitatively different relationships with key social institutions like the police department. Blacks are, for example, four times more likely than whites to be searched by police during a vehicular stop, even though whites are twice as likely to be in possession of illegal contraband.

Examining Latino-white inequity, the data show that approximately one-third of Latino households possess either zero or negative net worth compared to only 15 percent of white households. About half of all Latino workers do not earn a living wage, defined as at least $15 per hour, compared to only 15 percent of white workers. Nearly nine of every 10 Latino students in Chicago Public Schools attend schools where 75 percent or more of the student population is eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. And in terms of healthcare coverage, Latinos have an uninsured rate that is twice the rate of whites.

“… it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland – with the same moving picture re-shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction.”

Going beyond documenting inequities, the Kerner commission concluded its report with 73 pages of policy recommendations meant to close the opportunity gap, including massive job programs, investments in high-poverty areas, empowerment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to prevent labor force discrimination, racial integration and equality of schooling, and expansion in the benefits and coverage of social security programs. In the years since, few of these recommendations have been implemented.

Some might argue that the lack of action is because the laws, practices, and policies that have harmed black and Latino families have benefited others. When we look at the accumulation of wealth through housing, for instance, the historic policies implemented by the federal government to facilitate a massive expansion in homeownership were a major facilitator of upward mobility – but only for white families. These inequitable policies and practices are not old news. Today, discriminatory mortgage and lending markets persist, with equally credit-worthy black and Latino homeowners, on average, paying more for mortgages. Those homes, still too often in segregated neighborhoods, appreciate at a slower rate compared to homes in white areas.

Last Spring the Metropolitan Planning Council published an important report, The Cost of Segregation, demonstrating clearly that we all lose when racial inequity is allowed to persist unabated. The Kerner Report tried to make this point 50 years ago. But it also demonstrated that some of us are suffering far more than others.

Perhaps anticipating that politicians would not be interested in genuine racial change, the Kerner commission ended its report with quotes from social scientist Kenneth Clark’s expert testimony. These words are as relevant today as they were in 1968:

“I read that report … of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it is as if I were reading the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’35, the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’43, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot…. I must again in candor say to you members of this Commission – it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland – with the same moving picture re-shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction.”

So how might Chicagoans move ahead? A starting point begins with rekindling the spirit of the Kerner report, of facing head-on the problems that confront our city. Racial injustice in housing, education, health and other important areas are inextricably related and need to be remedied through a comprehensive and protracted strategy. Only a policy agenda that is well-funded and explicitly focused on racial equity has the potential to spark real change.

With the upcoming gubernatorial election, voters in Illinois have the opportunity to demand more from state leadership. Currently, none of the candidates on either side have offered a comprehensive plan for racial equity. As we reflect on the 50th anniversary of the Kerner report, we should be reminded of the urgent need to address racial inequity and demand that public leaders do more.

The UIC Great Cities Institute is hosting a full week of events marking the 50th anniversary of the release of the Kerner report from Feb. 26 through March 2, 2018, including a panel discussion on Thursday, March 1, featuring keynote speaker Dr. Fred Harris, the last surviving original member of the Kerner Commission.

]]>https://www.chicagoreporter.com/fifty-years-later-what-the-kerner-report-tells-us-about-race-in-chicago-today/feed/0Black America’s distrust of banks rooted in Reconstructionhttps://www.chicagoreporter.com/black-americas-distrust-of-banks-rooted-in-reconstruction/
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/black-americas-distrust-of-banks-rooted-in-reconstruction/#respondThu, 22 Feb 2018 12:00:28 +0000http://www.chicagoreporter.com/?p=1819114“This bank is just what the freedmen need,” remarked President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1865, as he signed the Freedman’s Bank Act, authorizing the organization of a national bank for recently emancipated black Americans.

A little more than a month later he was killed, making the Freedman’s Bank Lincoln’s last act of emancipation.

His assassination, however, did not impede its rapid growth. By January 1874, less than 10 years after the establishment of the Freedman’s Bank, deposits at its 34 branches across the United States totaled $3,299,201 ($65,200,000 in current dollars).

Despite such successful expansion, the Freedman’s Bank closed on June 28, 1874 under a shroud of suspicion and accusation.

The story of the rise and collapse of the Freedman’s Bank is an important and little known episode in black and American history in the years following emancipation.

While it is widely known that there are severe disparities in wealth and income between black and white Americans, the origins of this are less appreciated. Indeed, before there was a Great Recession or a Great Depression, recently emancipated black Americans had their first monies as freed persons mishandled and never returned in full.

The genesis

Several issues led to the creation of the Freedman’s Bank: the emancipation of slaves, increased pay of black soldiers, and migration of black Americans throughout the North and South.

Cases of black soldiers being swindled, for instance, were quite common, highlighting the need to establish a formal and central banking institution for newly freed blacks.

Following a meeting of key political and business leaders on Jan. 27, 1865, plans proposing the Freedman’s Bank were sent to Congress, which swiftly approved the banking institution.

The subsequent outreach efforts were led by the bank’s initial president (and inspector and superintendent of schools for the Freedmen’s Bureau – the organization authorized by President Lincoln on March 3, 1865 to support and assist freedmen and freedwomen during Reconstruction) was a white northerner named John W. Alvord.

Alvord, a former minister and attaché to General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War, traveled throughout the South recruiting blacks using endorsements from General Oliver O. Howard (the commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau): “as an order from Howard … Negro soldiers should deposit their bounty money with him.”

To assure possible depositors, Alvord also carried a handwritten letter from General Howard which read: “I consider the [Freedman’s Bank] to be greatly needed by the colored people, and have welcomed it as an auxiliary to the Freedmen’s Bureau.”

Success

Due to such recruiting efforts, the bank’s list of black depositors grew quickly, and soon 34 branches were established in locations across the country including New York City, Atlanta, Memphis, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., which also served as the headquarters.

“Go in any forenoon and the office is found full of Negroes depositing little sums of money, drawing little sums, or remitting to a distant part of the country where they have relatives to support or debts to discharge”

remarked a reporter in 1870 in Charleston, South Carolina amazed by the bank’s popularity.

Problems

By 1871, Congress had authorized the bank to provide mortgages and business loans.

Such mortgages and loans, however, were usually given to whites, creating a financial paradox: a bank using the savings and income of black depositors to advance the economic fortunes of whites who had at their disposal mainstream banks that excluded blacks.

Soon reports and rumors of corruption within the bank’s white management threatened the bank’s existence. In response, the bank’s management was replaced with a variety of black elites, most notably Frederick Douglass, who was appointed to head the bank in March of 1874.

These changes did not prevent the bank’s closing, with Douglass later describing the experience as being unwittingly “married to a corpse.”

Despite their usual disagreements, both W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T.+ Washington did agree that the bank’s collapse was a major blow to the confidence and livelihood of scores of black depositors who trusted the bank with their savings.

DuBois would remark:

“Then in one sad day came the crash —- all the hard-earned dollars of the freedmen disappeared; but that was the least of the loss —- all the faith in saving went too, and much of the faith in men; and that was a loss that a Nation which to-day sneers at Negro shiftlessness has never yet made good.”

Booker T. Washington noted:

“When they found out that they had lost, or been swindled out of all their savings, they lost faith in savings banks, and it was a long time after this before it was possible to mention a savings bank for Negroes without some reference being made to the disaster of [the Freedmen’s Bank].”

By 1900 only $1,638,259.49 ($43,900,000 in current dollars), or 62 percent, of the total amount of deposits prior to the bank’s failure had been paid. Deposits worth some $22 million in today’s dollars were largely lost.

In the end, most black depositors lost their savings, receiving little to no money back from the bank or the federal government.

Echoes today

As we mark the 153rd anniversary of the Civil War, the lessons of that era remain potent.

For its part, the story of the Freedman’s Bank reveals the important foresight Lincoln had in seeing a connection between the political freedom of black Americans and their financial security.

It also reminds us that to understand black banking and wealth today, we need to know some history.

Black wealth issues are not new problems. Rather, they are historically rooted in a persistent pattern of loss and mistreatment beginning with the mishandling of freedmen’s and freedwomen’s money during Reconstruction.

This is part of the promise of Black History Month, as it provides an opportunity to shine a light on not only the successes of black Americans, but also on the roots of persistent patterns of unequal and unfair treatment.

Indeed, as we continue to carve a path through the aftermath of the Great Recession, the mortgage crisis and growing racial disparities in wealth, the history of the Freedman’s Bank can serve as an important reminder of the connection between financial and political freedom and mobility.

Damage was done to black wealth and confidence long before banks were “too big to fail.”

]]>https://www.chicagoreporter.com/black-americas-distrust-of-banks-rooted-in-reconstruction/feed/0Harold Washington’s legacy provided touchstones for progressive politicshttps://www.chicagoreporter.com/harold-washingtons-legacy-provided-touchstones-for-progressive-politics/
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/harold-washingtons-legacy-provided-touchstones-for-progressive-politics/#respondWed, 22 Nov 2017 20:26:46 +0000http://chicagoreporter.com/?p=1603049Thirty years after the death of Harold Washington, his brief administration is remembered as a kind of “Camelot” for Chicago progressives–a shining moment when so much seemed possible.

Washington often promised us he would be mayor for 20 years. But he served only 4 ½ years before his death on Nov. 25, 1987, a few months into his second term. He faced extreme political constraints while in office, including vicious opposition by white aldermen and drastic cuts to federal funding for cities during the Reagan administration.

Still, many of Washington’s accomplishments remain as touchstones. He instituted a Freedom of Information Act order in his first days in office. He passed an ethics ordinance and the Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, giving renters stronger rights, after he gained control of City Council in 1985. He opened up the city’s budget process to public scrutiny, although Mayor Rahm Emanuel has backtracked on that. He gave collective bargaining rights to city workers. He barred city departments from cooperating with federal immigration officials, making Chicago the first “sanctuary city” in the Midwest.

Under Washington, city services were for the first time distributed equitably among communities. City contracts were opened up to those who had been excluded, through set-asides for minority and women-owned businesses. Patronage hiring and firing was ended and many more city jobs were opened to blacks and Latinos.

But Washington’s most visionary objectives were just getting off the ground when he died and his political coalition shattered. Chief among these goals was balanced development: redirecting resources from downtown to neglected neighborhoods and making jobs for those who need them most central to economic development policy. Community groups were able to give their input on housing, commercial development and plant closings. And one initiative required businesses receiving city subsidies to give residents the first shot at jobs.

In several cases, Washington forced accountability on developers or corporations. When Hasbro announced the closing of a West Side toy factory, five years after getting a $1 million subsidy and promising to create jobs, Washington forced the company to delay the closing and assist workers with re-employment. It was a small victory, but a significant shift in the city’s stance. And after advocates for the homeless protested the demolition of single-room occupancy hotels to build the luxury Presidential Towers in the West Loop, Washington required the developer to donate $5 million to a new fund that became the Low Income Housing Trust Fund. Today, the fund subsidizes the rent of over 20,000 Chicagoans.

A city’s tools for job creation are limited, and Washington chose to start by keeping existing industrial jobs here. When residential development began encroaching on manufacturers along the Clybourn Corridor, he created “planned manufacturing districts.” That program has helped keep good-paying industrial jobs in the city for three decades. Rahm Emanuel is now dismantling the most successful districts.

“If Harold had lived, we would have had much more balanced growth,” said Cook County Clerk David Orr, who was a Washington ally in the City Council 30 years ago.

Photo by William Camargo

A campaign button from Harold Washington’s first mayoral election is a souvenir of a historic moment.

One of Washington’s significant departures from the norm set by other Chicago mayors was his refusal to support a 1992 World’s Fair, notes DePaul University political scientist Larry Bennett, one of the editors of “Neoliberal Chicago.” The plan to host a World’s Fair was Mayor Jane Byrne’s version of “the one big thing that’s going to solve all our problems,” Bennett said. Mayor Richard M. Daley’s version was the 2016 Olympics proposal. Now, Emanuel’s version is an Amazon headquarters, which Bennett thinks will cost more than it’s worth and quite possibly create more problems than solutions. And many of the jobs created would likely to go to non-Chicagoans, and certainly not to low-income black and Latino residents.

Washington involved community groups in policy-making and held budget hearings in neighborhoods, reflecting a commitment to bottom-up governance that stands in stark contrast to subsequent administrations. Other initiatives that were just getting started under Washington do the same. A citizens’ schools task force he launched shortly before his death later led to the creation of elected local school councils. His two successors each closed dozens of neighborhood schools with councils, and opened dozens of privately-run charter schools without them. As a proponent of a strong public sector, it’s unlikely that Washington would have gone along with this school privatization.

In the police department, he established weekly community forums held by district commanders and senior citizen councils in all police districts. Those programs sowed the seeds of community policing, or CAPS. Daley formally initiated CAPS but then turned it into a public relations project for his administration. Emanuel made community policing a favorite talking point during his first term, but defunded the program.

Washington was never in a position to enact the civilian police review agency that he had proposed. But he opened two satellite offices of the department’s Office of Professional Standards “in order to ease people’s fear of reporting police misconduct,” according to his 1985 mid-term report.

There’s also good reason to believe the city wouldn’t be in its current fiscal situation had Washington lived. His was the most fiscally responsible administration in decades. He inherited a huge deficit but balanced the budget and raised the city’s credit rating, which has declined under Emanuel. And Emanuel just passed yet another budget with steep increases in taxes and fees, largely to pay off pension debt accumulated under Daley.

As I’ve pointed out, TIF diversions under Daley significantly outpaced the city’s pension obligations, and Daley’s love affair with tax increment financing began at the same time that he started shorting the pensions. I agree with Orr that Washington would have been much more transparent and judicious with the TIF program. TIF diversions have totaled $6 billion dollars since the program began, and they’ve gone “to help the wealthiest of the wealthy,” Orr said. That would not have been Washington’s approach.

In addition, Washington constantly hammered on the responsibility of state and federal government to do more to help cities. He was absolutely right. And once he’d consolidated his position here, he would most certainly have prioritized progressive tax reform in Springfield – something neither Daley nor Emanuel has done anything to advance.

He was also a vocal proponent of reforming the federal budget to shift military spending to social needs. That’s a crucial change if we are create a humane society, and no one in power today talks about it.

Washington died not long after winning control of the City Council and re-election. Had he lived, we would quite likely be in far better shape than we are today.

The question his legacy poses is, can we get back on track? The anti-Trump movement is one of many indications that there is room for Washington’s style of progressive populist politics today.

]]>https://www.chicagoreporter.com/harold-washingtons-legacy-provided-touchstones-for-progressive-politics/feed/0Obama library heightens debate over promise and peril of developmenthttps://www.chicagoreporter.com/obama-library-heightens-debate-over-promise-and-peril-of-development/
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/obama-library-heightens-debate-over-promise-and-peril-of-development/#commentsWed, 08 Nov 2017 17:04:17 +0000http://chicagoreporter.com/?p=1573974Seven years ago, Jeanette Taylor moved from the South Side Chicago neighborhood of Bronzeville three miles south to Woodlawn. Her Bronzeville unit was going to be rehabbed, the rent tripling. She needed a more affordable neighborhood.

Now Taylor fears her family may be uprooted again. In 2021, the Obama Presidential Center, an estimated $500 million library campus devoted to the 44th president, is slated to open in nearby Jackson Park, a stroll from Lake Michigan.

“The minute they announced the Obama Library was coming here, I was like, ‘What am I going to do?’” says Taylor, whose fears about the economic impact of the center are echoed by others in Woodlawn.

The angst over a library celebrating the nation’s first black president may seem puzzling to people who don’t live in Chicago. After all, the city—and the South Side, in particular—is very much Obama country. In 1985, a young Barack Obama arrived in the city as a community organizer. Michelle Obama grew up in a South Side neighborhood. The OPC is anticipated to bring a major jolt of investment to that part of the city: According to the Obama Foundation, the center will have a $339 million economic impact during construction, and $177 million annually from the three-building campus once it opens.

But as the project advances, fear of gentrification in a community that is already uneasy about an encroaching University of Chicago to the north has ignited a debate among residents and others about the benefits of the center to Woodlawn. Will it be the villain in another tale of dislocation and gentrification? Or will it be a national model for how residents can play a significant part in developing a center that welcomes innovative businesses and improves the lives of its neighbors?

The OPC, whose plans were first revealed in May, is the first such presidential library to be sited in an urban, predominantly black neighborhood, increasing the stakes both for the community and the former president. The center will occupy the northwest section of the 543-acre park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Besides the library itself, which will house a digital archive of Obama’s non-classified records, the center will include a museum, meeting spaces, restaurants and a garden.

Obama and his advisers stress its importance as a much-needed catalyst for community renewal. Woodlawn’s population is now at about 24,150, according to a 2015 Census snapshot by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. While that’s a daunting drop (in 1960 the area held 81,279 residents, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago), there have been recent signs that the community is rebounding, no doubt in part due to the upcoming library. The real estate website Redfin picked Woodlawn as the city’s second-hottest neighborhood for 2017.

The debate over the center has revealed sometimes-conflicting hopes for a pocket of the city that is still shedding the residue of disinvestment, racism and poverty.

For Taylor, education organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, it’s important to take a stand against displacement of black residents. For activists like Naomi Davis, it could be the last chance to build a walkable village for African-Americans, reminiscent of the Queens, New York neighborhood where she was raised. For academics like Janet Smith, it’s vital to make the center accountable through a community benefits agreement. And for longtime neighborhood power brokers such as the Rev. Byron Brazier of Apostolic Church of God and the Rev. Leon Finney Jr., founder of the Woodlawn Community Development Corp., it’s an opportunity to provide wisdom gleaned from years of efforts to revitalize their neighborhood.

Uneasy neighbors: Woodlawn and the University of Chicago

Photo by Marc Monaghan

Obama Library South Side CBA Coalition members camp out on the sidewalk outside Hyatt Regency McCormick Place on Sept. 13, 2017. The Obama Foundation was having a public meeting there the following day.

Taylor is part of a task force pushing for a community benefits agreement (CBA), a legal document that guarantees neighborhood involvement in development projects. Such agreements have worked successfully in urban neighborhoods from Los Angeles to New York City. One recent example: In 2008, the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team built an arena in the Hill District, a neighborhood that was once the city’s black cultural center. The CBA for the project defined wage requirements and required developers to commit to $8.3 million in neighborhood improvements, including a grocery store and youth center.

But the Obama Foundation is opposed to a CBA. In previous public comments, the former president said that a community benefits agreement can be a “useful tool” when for-profit developers are involved, but maintained that, as a nonprofit, “We are bringing money to the community.” Instead, his foundation recently announced a search for a “diversity consultant” to enforce minority contracting and hiring.

Taylor casts a jaundiced eye at the prominent players in the presidential center saga, particularly the University of Chicago, which will run programs with it. “How many times have we been played about everything that comes to this community that’s supposed to be for us, that’s not supposed to push us out?” says Taylor, who attend Mollison Elementary School in Bronzeville.

Photo by Max Herman

Woodlawn resident and Kenwood Oakland Community Organization organizer Jeanette Taylor fears that the Obama Presidential Center will stir gentrification in her neighborhood.

The Obamas have considerable history with the University of Chicago. They own a home in Kenwood, a neighborhood of elegant mansions and low-rise apartment buildings just north of the university where Obama taught constitutional law for almost a decade before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. Michelle Obama joined the university’s medical center staff in 2002. She was vice-president for community and external affairs when she resigned in 2009, shortly before her husband’s inauguration.

But the university’s reputation among South Side communities is decidedly mixed. In “Making the Second Ghetto,” historian Arnold R. Hirsch documents the university’s support of restrictive covenants, designed to limit the number of blacks living near it. Hirsch and other researchers unearthed previous university efforts to keep development inside its Hyde Park boundaries, while economic life was sucked from adjacent Woodlawn.

“There’s been a long history of people from Woodlawn not trusting the University of Chicago,” says Dominic Pacyga, urban historian and retired professor from Columbia College Chicago. “The university was the boogeyman.”

In an email, University of Chicago spokeswoman Marielle Sainvilus didn’t directly address the university’s history with Woodlawn or its position on a CBA, but touted the university’s support for affordable housing and economic development through its Office of Civic Engagement and work with groups such as the nonprofit developer Preservation of Affordable Housing. The UChicago Local initiative also works to match area business owners with contracts at the university and its medical center and unemployed and underemployed South Side residents with jobs.

The university was also criticized by neighbors to the north. In 2003, Bronzeville residents accused the university of “stealing” the famed Checkerboard Lounge, once owned by blues legend Buddy Guy and frequented by the likes of Junior Wells and Muddy Waters. At the time, university officials said they were trying to preserve blues on the South Side by offering the club space in Hyde Park. The club closed permanently in 2015. While the university’s intentions can be debated, some saw this incident as another example of its heavy hand in attempting to control the culture and future of the area.

The other finalist for the Obama Center, Washington Park, sits on the western edge of the university’s campus. City planners looked at it as part of its bid for the 2016 Olympics, ultimately awarded to Brazil.

“If I was Obama, I would have picked Washington Park,” said Pacyga, who lives on the South Side. “You have the El there and you’re closer to the Dan Ryan [Expressway]. He speculated that the university’s input may have pulled the project to Jackson Park. “It might have been a more ideal spot because it’s under their control.”

Getting promises in writing

Photo by José Alejandro Córcoles

Activist Naomi Davis stands in Jackson Park, the future site of the Obama Presidential Center, which she sees as a chance to develop the neighborhood into a walkable village.

In 2010, lawyer and community organizer Naomi Davis moved to Woodlawn with her organization, Blacks in Green, or BIG. It gained influence and publicity by ensuring Englewood residents were fairly compensated when Norfolk Southern Railway expanded it rail yard station; helping to develop green landscaping for Chicago Housing Authority properties and creating a map of West Woodlawn properties that were vacant, for sale or targeted for demolition.

“I was looking for a neighborhood like the one I grew up in,” she said, describing her motivation to start BIG. She loves the idea of villages within a city and realized that African-American communities “where you could walk to work, walk to shop, walk to learn, walk to play, had gone extinct in my lifetime.”

She is focused on preserving and re-energizing Woodlawn, determined that it not go the way of other Great Migration legacy communities such as Harlem that experienced major gentrification.

During the summer, when Davis was not in one of the many community gardens in her neighborhood, she could be found at meetings for a community benefits agreement. The Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Southside Together Organizing for Power, Bronzeville Regional Collective, Prayer and Action Collective and the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, also support a CBA. Recently, two large union locals joined the coalition, the Chicago Teachers Union and Service Employees International Union Health Care Illinois/Indiana.

For Davis, the logic behind a CBA is simple: “If we don’t have a system for recording what people promised, holding them to account for it, then what if they don’t do what they said they were going to do?”

A firm, specific jobs commitment is crucial, according to Janet Smith, co-director and associate professor at the Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“You put in writing a percentage, so that it’s fair to everyone,” Smith elaborated. “You not only get people employed, but you think even further back.”

“What are they doing now to make sure that people in the community can even get employed?” she asks, adding that job training should be preparing workers for positions building and staffing the center.

An economic assessment by the Obama Foundation predicted the presidential center will generate close to 5,000 jobs during construction and about 2,500 jobs after the center opens. The assessment projects an economic impact of $3.1 billion from construction through the center’s first decade.

Smith, a consultant to the CBA network, said residents are smart to be leary of the University of Chicago and the city as watchdogs for neighborhood priorities. In addition to employment and education, she advocates exploring other economic mechanisms in a CBA, including rent stabilization and property tax relief so longtime homeowners don’t get hit with soaring bills as housing values rise.

A project as large as this one raises moral as well as economic questions, she said.

“If it happens in such a way that my taxes go up or my rent goes up and I can’t afford to stay,” Smith said, “then that’s wrong.”

Two views on community benefits agreements

Photo by Max Herman

Longtime Woodlawn resident William Hill is concerned that the effects of the Obama Presidential Center but isn’t sure that a community benefits agreement is the solution.

Artist William Hill lives in the house where he grew up with his parents and grandparents, down the street from Brazier’s Apostolic Church. He is not so sure a CBA is a good idea, even though he shares advocates concerns about gentrification and displacement. He said some CBA proponents have brought a bitter and divisive tone to his community.

Hill is active in 1Woodlawn, an outgrowth of organizing work at Apostolic Church, which Brazier took over the 18,000-member church from his legendary father, Bishop Arthur M. Brazier, in 2008.

“Woodlawn was creating its own plan before the [Obama] library got here,” Brazier said.

He is quick to note that the church’s efforts in the area have deeper roots than those of some CBA advocates. But the congregation is also geographically dispersed now.

Brazier cites two initiatives to redevelop the community—the Network of Woodlawn, a community development collaborative that started in 2012, and 1Woodlawn, launched in 2015. Both focus on safety, education, and health issues, and both could be used to push for neighborhood priorities in future development.

He advocates using neighborhood power to negotiate with developers, including the University of Chicago. The community’s clout could be used to push for property tax and rent relief, similar to the objectives of CBA proponents, he added.

“The Obama Library is not a developer,” he said. “They’re not going to build one commercial strip. They’re not going to rehab or change one building. They’re not going to do anything (outside the library’s boundaries).”

So while a CBA is being planned and negotiated, he said, “the [alderman] is meeting with real developers.”

Davis contends that the stakes for Woodlawn and other communities in the Obama Presidential Center district are so high that nothing less than a CBA should be accepted. “We know that we want family-supporting wages, that we want these vendor contracts, that we want parity in public investment dollars, that we want ownership of the land,” she said.

The most recent entry into this crowded field of community engagement players is a still-unnamed nonprofit that started last spring with $250,000 from the Chicago Community Trust, a local foundation that also helped fund 1Woodlawn. Former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a basketball pal of Obama, and Sherman Wright, managing partner of marketing communication and advertising firm Ten 35, are co-chairs of this 25-person entity, which is designed to ensure the struggling communities surrounding the center benefit from new investments. Some neighborhood activists, however, see it as an attempt to placate them, or even silence their voices.

Davis is also a member of this new committee, chosen by the Obama Foundation, the University of Chicago, the Obama Presidential Center and other stakeholders. She says she’s well aware of community champions who have been co-opted elsewhere—and she vows that she will not waver from her commitment to a CBA.

“They understood what they were getting.”

]]>https://www.chicagoreporter.com/obama-library-heightens-debate-over-promise-and-peril-of-development/feed/2Why the Obama library needs a community benefits agreementhttps://www.chicagoreporter.com/why-the-obama-library-needs-a-community-benefits-agreement/
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/why-the-obama-library-needs-a-community-benefits-agreement/#commentsMon, 30 Oct 2017 21:24:22 +0000http://chicagoreporter.com/?p=1557480For the first time since the 2016 election, former President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail recently to court voters for Democratic candidates. Sadly, at the same time, he’s been letting down his own earliest Chicago supporters.

The let-down came during a recent public meeting about the Obama Presidential Center, planned for the South Side in historic Jackson Park. Speaking via video, Obama dismissed the idea of a community benefits agreement to ensure that jobs and economic development sparked by the center benefit those of us who already live in the community. Brushing aside an idea that has gained traction among thousands of black residents raises questions about Obama’s commitment to low-income and working-class black families–and frankly, the validity of the Obama Foundation’s leadership summit that the former president is hosting here on October 31st.

From the moment the president announced the location, our community expressed overlapping perspectives: general excitement and extreme concern. Excitement because of what the center could bring in terms of quality-of-life improvements; and extreme concern about ramping up the relentless gentrification that has helped force some 200,000 black Chicagoans out of the city since 2000.

Given Chicago’s troubled racial history and Obama’s strong relationship to the city, we need a written guarantee that the partners developing his library will invest in bettering our lives, not accelerating our departure.

While Obama urged residents to “trust” him, we have good reason to want his assurances in writing. Our betrayed trust in Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was so highly endorsed by Obama, has left us disappointed and distrustful of the former president. City policies started by former Mayor Richard M. Daley and accelerated under Emanuel have demolished public housing, transformed affordable housing into market-rate condominiums and jump-started investment in infrastructure and amenities to attract affluent newcomers.

Take historic Bronzeville. A two-bedroom apartment here rents for $1400—out of reach for many working families. So many schools have closed that parents had to stage a hunger strike to save the last open-enrollment, neighborhood high school. Promises to create quality, affordable housing have fallen short. Not surprisingly, many former residents have fled to the suburbs, northwest Indiana or even the Quad Cities in Iowa.

Residents of Bronzeville, South Shore, Woodlawn, Washington Park and other neighborhoods formed the Obama Center Community Benefits Coalition and have heard overwhelming support for the idea among thousands of people. The Obama Foundation, however, has done everything it could to avoid respectful engagement with the coalition. They formed a “shadow” community group, with several members who have questionable reputations in our community. They passed us off to Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th Ward), who has refused to support the coalition in public meetings.

We as black Americans are being purged from major American cities, and this disruption of our lives, political power and history is met with a deafening silence from our first black president.

Finally, after we staged a sleepover in front of the Hyatt Hotel the day before the September 15 public meeting, the foundation agreed that one of our representatives could ask the first question when President Obama appeared via Skype. When she asked why he didn’t support a benefits agreement, he responded that they are often viable solutions—but not in this case. He said community groups would scramble for contracts, and implied any agreement would lead to abuse. He told the adoring crowd of hundreds to trust him, and that he would make sure that residents were supported.

It is deeply disappointing that he chose a condescending, “we know better than you” response to a coalition of reputable, community-based groups. This tone was like fingernails on a chalkboard and I, unannounced, approached the mic so that our representative would not be alone. A short but necessary argument ensued between me and the former president. I am a proud member of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Chicago’s oldest black-led, grassroots community group, and he needed to know we are not scrambling for contracts. We seek an ordinance protecting residents’ interests. We need assurances and accountability in writing, not just verbal promises.

The irony is, we want to trust him. One of my (now 8-year old) son’s first phrases was “Barack Obama.” As black people, we wholeheartedly supported President Obama. I shed a tear at an election party in 2008, and marveled at how he and the first lady moved with such grace and dignity in a Washington that did not support him because of the color of his skin. He was my state senator. He spoke at the 2003 convention of KOCO, where I was then board president, as he was running for the U.S. Senate. From that moment, we rejoiced at his ascension to leader of the free world.

Unfortunately, the people who supported him the most, not only in Chicago but in cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, Oakland, Newark, and New Orleans, continue to suffer through state-sanctioned, manufactured misery and the sabotage of community institutions. We as black Americans are being purged from major American cities, and this disruption of our lives, political power and history is met with a deafening silence from our first black president. We pay taxes, too. The return on that investment should not be removal, but the support that every American should expect from their government.

A CBA for the Obama Presidential Center can be a model for other cities of how to invest in, not expel, working-class and low-income families. This would be change we can believe in.